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Help:Minor edit: Difference between revisions
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→When not to mark an edit as a minor edit: Expand
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* Adding or removing [[Wikipedia:Citing sources|references]] or [[Wikipedia:External links|external links]] in an article | * Adding or removing [[Wikipedia:Citing sources|references]] or [[Wikipedia:External links|external links]] in an article | ||
* Adding comments to a [[Help:Using talk pages|talk page]] or other discussion | * Adding comments to a [[Help:Using talk pages|talk page]] or other discussion | ||
== Things to remember == | |||
* Marking a major change as a minor one is considered poor etiquette, especially if the change involves the deletion of some text. | |||
* Consequently, if you are in doubt about whether an edit is minor or not, it is ''always'' safer not to mark it as minor. | |||
* [[Help:Reverting|Reverting]] a page is not likely to be considered minor under most circumstances. When the status of a page is disputed, and particularly if an edit war is brewing, then it is better not to mark ''any'' edit as minor. Reverting blatant vandalism is an exception to this rule. | |||
* If you ''accidentally'' mark an edit as minor when it was in fact a major edit, you should make a second edit, or [[Help:Dummy edit|dummy edit]], noting in the dummy's [[Help:Edit summary|edit summary]] that the previous edit was major. As a trivial edit to be made for this purpose, just opening the edit box and saving (''i.e.'', changing nothing) will not work. Neither will certain changes that do not affect the presentation of the page in [[HTML]], such as adding a blank space at the end of a line or a blank line at the end of the page; in these cases the edit is cancelled and the edit summary discarded. However, one can, for example, add an extra space between two words. This will be preserved in the wikitext and recorded as a change, although it will not change the page's appearance when rendered. | |||
* It may be worth communicating any disagreement about what is minor via Talk or a message to the contributor, being careful to avoid a flame war ("I thought your change was a bit more than minor—maybe I am being over-sensitive?"). There is a grey area, and many contributors will appreciate feedback on whether they've got it right. | |||
* Marking your change as minor affects how it displays in some [[Help:Watching pages#Watchlist|editors' watchlists]]. If, for example, you mark your talk page comments as "minor", then fewer editors are likely to notice your comment. | |||
* The designation of a change as minor or major is not a reflection of how much work went into making the change. For instance, even if you spent several hours finding and fixing problems with the formatting of references, the change would still be minor. Editors should not feel that marking a change as minor devalues their effort. | |||